After much mocking by Ellen Degeneres about Chris Matthews’ dancing abilities on his last appearance on her syndicated show, the Hardball host chatted with DeGeneres, on last Thursday’s show, about the election of Barack Obama and actually grabbed a shot glass to toast Obama’s win with DeGeneres who exulted: “Amazing! And you must be thrilled? I mean what, what a moment.” Matthews: “Well I am thrilled!” Matthews, picking up shot glass: “To Barack Obama!” DeGeneres, toasting: “Yeah. To Barack Obama!”

With “Any Regrets?” as the on-screen heading, Katie Couric pressed “independent Democratic” Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to atone for campaigning with unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate John McCain and criticizing eventual winner Barack Obama. Couric’s first question in the interview excerpt aired on last Wednesday’s CBS Evening News: “Do you feel as if you owe President-elect Obama one?” Couric next pushed Lieberman to take back an attack: “You said, on whether Senator Obama is a Marxist, you said quote: ‘It’s a good question to ask.’ Are you sorry you said that?”

Couric proceeded to relay another Democratic complaint/aspersion against Lieberman: “What really irritated — even enraged — some Democrats was your speech at the Republican National Convention. Did you understand at the time how nervy that might seem to some Democrats? How inappropriate?”

Eight years ago when incoming President George W. Bush named Senator John Ashcroft as his choice for Attorney General, the broadcast network evening newscasts applied ideological labels and highlighted opposition to him from liberals, but last Tuesday night with President-elect Barack Obama’s pick of Eric Holder for the same position, the anchors avoided any ideological tags or controversies and hailed him as an “historic” pick which fulfills Obama’s promise of “diversity.”

A week after Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell agreed with readers who saw “a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama” in the paper’s campaign coverage, Howell on November 16 admitted she voted for Obama and “bet” that so did “most” in the Post’s newsroom: “I’ll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don’t even want to be quoted by name in a memo.”

MSNBC took denigrating Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to a new low on Thursday night’s Countdown. With “BREAKING NEWS” ridiculously on screen, MSNBC ended the show, hosted by David Shuster filling in for Keith Olbermann, with more than three minutes of video of some turkeys being slaughtered by a man behind Palin while rotating chyrons hyperbolically declared: “Turkeys Die as Governor Palin Takes Questions from Media,” “Gov. Sarah Palin Keeps Talking While Turkeys Get Slaughtered Behind Her,” “Gov. Palin Apparently Oblivious to Turkey Carnage over Her Shoulder,” “Gov. Palin Not Realizing Incongruity of Her Words Versus Her Backdrop” and “Turkey-killing Fowls Palin News Conference.” The video aired after MSNBC ran a story on Palin’s pre-Thanksgiving pardoning of a turkey at a Wasilla poultry farm.